Naturalistic Social Communication in Autistic Females: Identification of Speech Prosody Markers

自闭症女性的自然社交沟通：语音韵律标记的识别

• 批准号: 10823000
• 负责人: Orla Caroline Putnam
• 金额: $ 4.13万
• 依托单位: UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-01-01 至 2025-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10823000
• 关键词: Age; Area; Behavioral; Characteristics; Child; Communication; Communities; Compensation; Complex; Comprehensive Health Care; Data; Development; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Early Diagnosis; Emotional; Emotions; Female; Frequencies; Gender; Goals; Individual; Knowledge; Language; Measurement; Measures; Methodology; Modality; Motivation; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders; Outcome; Parents; Participant; Personal Satisfaction; Persons; Phenotype; Play; Population; Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Research Support; Role; Sampling; Sex Differences; Social Behavior; Social Interaction; Speech; Standardization; Statistical Data Interpretation; Stress; Structure; Training; Underrepresented Populations; Visual attention; Vocation; Voice; Women' s Group; Work; autism spectrum disorder; autistic; autistic children; biomarker identification; design; diagnostic tool; experience; female couples; improved; interest; language processing; male; men' s group; multimodal data; multimodality; natural language; novel; peer; phrases; repetitive behavior; sex; skills; social; social attention; social communication; social skills; theories; trait; visual tracking

PROJECT SUMMARY Autistic females are diagnosed at a significantly lower rate and at later ages than males. As a result, much less is known about the female autism phenotype. Studies have indicated that diagnostic tools may be biased towards males and that findings characterizing the autism phenotype may fail to capture females due to little or no female representation in their sample. Emerging research has identified unique sex differences in the autistic population across several modalities, including language. The handful of studies that have characterized language use in autistic females have done so through examining word use, identifying nuanced ways that autistic females use discourse markers, pronouns, and emotional words. These differences may contribute to autistic females’ heightened social motivation, using language to compensate for social difficulties, although no study has directly explored this possibility. We propose to bridge this gap through a focus on speech prosody, an understudied area of pragmatic language that allows individuals to convey meaning and emotion through speech. Prosody plays an important role in social-communication and in the early detection of autism, yet few studies have included females in their sample and no study has closely examined potential sex differences. In Aim 1, we will characterize differences in key prosodic markers of pitch and tempo in young children (4-8 years) by sex, diagnosis, and conversational content using a novel adaptation of natural language sampling methodology. In Aim 2, we will use multi-modal data collected through an ongoing study (R01-HD103895-01A1) to explore the relationship between speech prosody, social traits, and formal language. We hypothesize that the autistic (ASD) group will significantly differ from the non-autistic (NA) group in multiple measures of pitch and tempo, and that these differences will be exacerbated during conversation around a “special interest” topic. We predict that while ASD females will display more “typical” prosody in common prosodic measurements of pitch, they will be differentiated from ASD males and NA females in more socially complex measurements of intonation, speech rate, and pause. We predict overall negative relationships between social measurements and speech prosody markers associated with ASD: These relationships will be stronger for ASD females than males, while relationships between speech prosody and language scores will be stronger for ASD males. Training aims include advancing Ms. Putnam’s skills in multi-modal methodologies, eye tracking, language processing, and statistical analyses. This project will enhance current understanding of speech prosody and how it relates to other important aspects of the autism phenotype. By further characterizing the female autism phenotype, this work will contribute to more timely diagnoses and comprehensive care of this understudied population.

项目摘要 自闭症女性的诊断率明显低于男性。结果，要少得多 对女性自闭症表型有所了解。研究表明，诊断工具可能会偏向于 雄性和表征自闭症表型的发现可能因很少或没有女性而无法捕获女性 样本中的表示。新兴研究已经确定了加速人群的独特性别差异 跨越包括语言在内的几种方式。少数研究语言使用的研究 自闭症女性通过检查单词使用，确定加速女性使用的细微差别方式 话语标记，代词和情感词。这些差异可能有助于加速的女性 增强社会动机，使用语言来弥补社会困难，尽管没有任何研究直接 探索了这种可能性。我们建议通过对言语韵律的关注来弥合这一差距，这是一个理解的 务实的语言领域，使个人可以通过语音传达意义和情感。韵律 在社会通信和自闭症的早期发现中起着重要作用，但很少有研究 包括女性样本中的女性，没有研究仔细研究了潜在的性别差异。在AIM 1中，我们将 通过性别（4-8岁）的年幼儿童（4-8岁）的主要韵律标记和节奏的主要韵律差异来表征 使用自然语言抽样方法的新颖适应性的诊断和对话内容。在 AIM 2，我们将使用正在进行的研究（R01-HD103895-01A1）收集的多模式数据来探索 语音韵律，社会特征和形式语言之间的关系。我们假设自闭症（ASD） 在多个音高和节奏的测量中，组将与非自动（NA）组显着不同，并且 这些差异将在围绕“特殊兴趣”主题的对话中加剧。我们预测 ASD女性将在常见的韵律测量中显示更多的“典型”韵律，它们将是 在语调的更复杂的测量中，与ASD男性和NA女性区分开 费率和暂停。我们预测社会测量与语音韵律之间的总体负面关系 与ASD相关的标记：ASD女性的这些关系比男性更强，而 对于ASD男性，语音韵律与语言分数之间的关系将是牢固的。培训目标 包括推进普特南女士在多模式方法中的技能，眼睛跟踪，语言处理以及 统计分析。该项目将增强对语音韵律及其与之相关的现行理解 自闭症表型的其他重要方面。通过进一步表征女性自闭症表型， 工作将有助于更及时的诊断和全面护理这一知识的人群。